Little Seedlings Bilingual Preschool is a new preschool in the Renton, WA, and has no budget to establish a Vietnamese and English library for their preschool students. The Director hopes to expand their small library with not only Vietnamese and English books, but also collect read-along books to stimulate their students’ literacy skills and boost independent reading. Through this project, iSchool Student Charlene developed a Collection Development Policy for the library, fund-raised $275 for the Listen Center, cataloged and weeded 400+ books using LibraryThing, and organized the library space for better access and browsing for students.

Have you ever thought about what happened behind the scenes when you search databases on your library’s online catalog? Exlibris, a ProQuest Company manages about more than 15,000 titles of databases and provide libraries with title metadata. The company recently developed a new back-end tool which aims to better serve its clients. The goal of our project is to develop an efficient data migration strategy and migrate metadata from the old tool into the new one. Since the library’s online catalog are becoming an integral part of our professional life, we are hoping to make it more convenient for everyone.

Browsing for genre fiction and graphic novels is difficult for library users and staff with the current organization styles at Scenic Regional Library branches. Genres are inconsistently and incompletely labeled and graphic novels are organized in the 741.5s by author last name. In my proposal, I recommend the addition of more genre spine labels (fantasy/science fiction, romance, suspense) to the current use of mystery, religious fiction, and western. To make graphic novels more browser-friendly, I suggest disregarding the customary use of author name in the call number in favor of the series names to organize the materials on the shelf.

The media collections of the Macalester College Library are organized in a less than optimal way, particularly the film collection, which is fragmented into nearly indistinguishable collections, which do not lend themselves well to patron engagement. As such, an organizational plan was constructed for these collections, synthesized from a literature review, observations taken at similar institutions, and a patron survey aimed at discovering the ways in which patrons wish to utilize media. The proposal called for a reorganizing of collections and the creation of a dedicated media space in order to better help the library to best meet those wishes.

“From Collections to Data” analyzes UWSC holdings that can be used to develop, describe, make accessible, and support reuse of data derived from collection materials. UWSC has collections that are candidates for computational research, but the organization does not have the means, personnel, or infrastructure to make the data accessible. The developed report suggests how UWSC can provide access to datasets in the following sections: (1) background on the Collections as Data (CaD) movement through a case study analysis of cultural heritage institutions, (2) recommendations for developing a CaD initiative, and (3) suggested next steps for implementing a CaD project.

This capstone project is a protocol intended for researchers conducting qualitative sociotechnical research on data science in the public sector. Its purpose is twofold. First, to design an interpretive qualitative study to further understanding of the as-of-yet understudied area of data science workers who operate in the public sector. Second, to produce a protocol that addresses persistent challenges in transparency within qualitative sociotechnical research by providing a toolkit for doing open, credible, and reproducible collection and analysis of qualitative data. As with data science research itself, this protocol borrows from multiple disciplines to allow for a high degree of usability.

Sidney Huntington School in Galena, Alaska has a thin collection of Graphic Novels and Manga. A majority of high school students read below grade level making it essential to explore how graphic novels could aid in literacy development and increase lifelong readers. I surveyed students regarding their interests, researched how graphic novels impacted literacy, found the best resources in determining the quality of graphic novels, created a policy for future collection development, and built a Must-Have list. SHS will acquire these titles to provide resources for classroom use, choices for reluctant readers, options for current fans, and offer new experiences.

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) recently implemented their first digital asset management (DAM) solution. They originally sought to implement a system that would improve the administration of their digital media across all departments. Our work realized the limitations of the purchased software as well as the DAM’s unidentified scope and purpose which would not support the various use cases across the institution’s departments. This presented an opportunity to take the lessons learned and evolve them into a cohesive assessment. We further developed our recommendations into an iterative model that integrates SAM’s needs and organizational culture for their future DAM success.

The West Coast has seen an increase in poor air quality due to wildfires. Witnessing first-hand the impact that smoke had on the Spokane community, I partnered with the Spokane Public Library to identify what the library could do to prepare for these events in the future. The result of this research and exploration is an ideas and resources guide that public libraries can use to help propel the conversation on how to help communities during episodes of poor air quality.

My aim for my Capstone was to make some of the previously unavailable historical visual materials housed in UW's Special Collections accessible for researchers by providing organized, digitized, and searchable collections. To do this, I identified photograph subject matter, researched historical context and significance, inventoried collections, determined appropriate organizational schemes, created indexes, digitizing prints and negatives, preserved materials by moving them to appropriate archival housing, created finding aids using the XMetaL Author program, and linked XML entries to corresponding digital scans. By the project's end I had completed two collections, and determined organizational systems and background information for two more.